Life as she knew it stopped Oct. 3, 1991, the day her 28-year-old daughter, Denise Collins, was raped in her Orange County apartment and beaten to death.

Tuesday is the day Stewart has been waiting for all these years.

The New Jersey mother and her surviving daughter, Annette Collins, plan to travel to Florida to witness the execution of Darius Kimbrough, the man convicted of the savage attack.

It's past time, Stewart said.

"There's no closure," she said. "There's no forgiveness for him from either of us. No forgiveness whatsoever. Twenty-two years is outrageous. It's just outrageous."

If 40-year-old Kimbrough is put to death as scheduled, he will be the 81st person executed in Florida since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty in 1976 and the second man executed using a new drug.

A pending federal lawsuit alleges that the drug, one of three used in the process, violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Stewart is unmoved: "He's going to leave this planet much easier than she did."

Shock doesn't go away

Denise and Annette Collins were best friends. They loved going to the beach and antiquing together, playing Monopoly and cards, listening to pop music and styling each other's hair.

Denise was an aspiring graphic artist and fashion designer who could take cloth scraps and transform them, her sister said.

"It looked like couture from a high-fashion store," said Annette Collins, now 51 and living in Ocean County, N.J.

Denise Collins graduated from Titusville High School and Brevard Community College — now Eastern Florida State College — and briefly attended art school in Boston. She drew, painted and sculpted.

She was working at a Kinko's copy center and had recently moved to Carousel Club Apartments on Rio Grande Avenue south of Orlando when she was murdered.

"Sometimes you sit here even after all these years and can't believe this happened to your loved one, your family," Annette Collins said. "It doesn't go away. The shock of it just doesn't go away."

Denise Collins had complained to a manager at her apartment complex that a stranger, thought to have been Kimbrough, was harassing her with lewd comments and had threatened her. He lived with his mother in a different building at Carousel Club.

One night, Kimbrough, then 18, put a ladder against Collins' second-floor balcony, climbed up and broke in through a sliding-glass door. He raped her in her bed, punched her in the face, broke her jaw and fractured numerous bones in her skull.

Orange-Osceola State Attorney Jeff Ashton, who prosecuted the case early in his career, remembers seeing blood everywhere in Collins' bedroom. He also remembers standing at the foot of her hospital bed as machines kept her alive.

She died the day after the beating when life support was disconnected. Her sister was there, holding her hand.

Kimbrough was arrested after he raped another Orange County woman in March 1992, leaving DNA evidence that connected him to the attack on Denise Collins. He was sentenced to 101/2 years in prison for that crime.

Ashton plans to attend the execution with Assistant State Attorney Ted Culhan, who was his co-counsel on the case, and Riggs Gay, the sheriff's detective who investigated.

2 mothers' losses

Annie Kimbrough has suffered a loss, too. Darius is her only child, and she believes him when he says he is innocent.

But the Florida Supreme Court denied Kimbrough's appeal Oct. 31, paving the way for the execution to move forward. On Friday, the court denied a written request from Kimbrough to review the case again.